IPC-7530A: A New Soldering Standard for Your Circuit Board Project

Bittele Electronics is a longstanding Certified IPC Member Facility, and our clients often ask us about IPC standards for their PCB projects. We most commonly receive questions about the well-known IPC-A-610 Class 2 and Class 3 PCB Assembly standards, both of which are well within our capabilities, but occasionally our clients will contact us about lesser-known IPC standards, particularly when a new standard is released. We have heard from a few curious clients about the recent IPC-7530A standard for soldering, so this article is intended to clear up those questions for any designers out there who might be wondering.

The IPC-7530A standard is a guideline document for temperature profiling during Automated PCB Assembly, including both Reflow Soldering and Wave Soldering. For clients of Bittele, the short answer to your questions about this standard is that you will not have to worry about making any adjustments on your end of the equation in order to comply. The guidelines within the IPC-7530A standard is intended for process engineers who oversee large-scale PCB Assembly projects.

As a part of our PCB Assembly Process, our process engineers will review your designs to develop a custom temperature profile for your PCB. We do employ a standard reflow temperature profile, which is well suited the vast majority of PCB projects, but we make sure to review every order as a part of our initial DFM Check, in order to determine the suitability of our standard method for your specific project.

A meticulously calculated temperature profile is crucial to High Quality PCB Assembly, and getting this aspect of the project wrong can result in Common PCB Defects such as tombstoning or hole voids. Getting the profile right is a matter of striking a balance: in projects with larger parts, such as BGA Assembly, higher temperatures are required to ensure proper bonding; in projects with smaller parts, such as 0201 passives, care must be taken to avoid damaging the fragile and Complex PCB Components.

The graph below shows our standard reflow soldering temperature profile. You will note that our reflow process includes a gradual soak cycle before the higher temperatures of the reflow cycle, which helps to avoid common defects without requiring unreasonably high reflow cycle temperatures.

If you have any further questions for us about the IPC-7530A standard, or about Bittele’s temperature profile considerations, please feel free to Contact Us any time! You can also send your PCB Design Files to sales@7pcb.com for an official quotation.